Honesty, the best medicine, is how we open up our profile of Jared McCann.

When the Canucks took McCann 24th overall back in this past June's draft, myself - and without putting words in their mouth's, my peers on this platform - weren't exactly the biggest fans of the selection. The thinking initially was that it eerily reeked of a typically "safe" Canucks pick.

After all, we're talking about a franchise here that has managed to write itself a long and storied history over the last decade-plus of settling for players who should theoretically play in the National Hockey League, but realistically have a limited likelihood of ever actually blowing us out of the water and becoming impactful assets. The reservation and apprehension were duly justified in that regard.

But a few months have since passed, and there has been something of a recalibration that has taken place. There's no shame in changing your tune as new information makes itself available, moulding your thought process accordingly. That's where we're at right now with Jared McCann.

This guide is an overview for the media and newcomers to the NHL's advanced (or "fancy") stats. It includes definitions of the key advanced stats concepts, plus an FAQ to clarify some of the typical inquiries about these measures. It is not to meant to be completely comprehensive; only a useful introduction to possession-based analysis.

In my view, Gaunce's stock isn't down as much as his slide down our rankings might suggest. Bear in mind though, I say that because his stock shouldn't have been high enough to place him at number one in the first place. I had Gaunce at number three last year, and I had him at number six this time around - which isn't a huge fall considering that the Canucks have drafted twice in the top-10 at the past two NHL Entry Drafts.

Meta-commentary that quibbles about Gaunce's place in our prospects list is so last August though. While Gaunce's slide down our list probably overstates the extent to which his development has flat-lined, It's probably fair to say that the sturdy two-way forward's development and production have not come along as hoped since his draft year. Still, it's not all doom and gloom here, Gaunce has scored 30 goals in each of his previous two OHL seasons, he's still just 20-years-old, and he's only just about to turn professional.

As we move closer and closer to the top-5 prospects in the Vancouver Canucks' system, we start moving out of "we hope this guy can make the NHL" territory, and into the range of guys where we can reasonably expect them to make some sort of legitimate NHL impact.

Ben Hutton, our 8th ranked prospect, hasn't quite earned "surefire NHLer" status yet, but considering the season he had with the University of Maine Black Bears in the NCAA last year, he's knocking loudly on that door.

While a large majority of the guys we've profiled can say that they had a good 2013-2014 (except for one extremely notable guy we'll get to some time down the road), only Hutton can claim that his was all-time good. The big, mobile, and talented forward-turned-defender broke a University of Maine scoring record for defensemen, rippling the mesh behind notoriously stingy Hockey East goalies an astounding 15 times. But in case "Look! GOALS!" wasn't a strong enough selling point, Ben Hutton does all sorts of other things quite well, too, leaving us with many, many reasons to be hopeful that he'll find himself in the NHL sooner rather than later.